Karl Meyer (activist)
Karl H. Meyer (born 1937 in
Life
Karl Meyer grew up in West Rupert, Vermont. His father first worked there as a soil-conservation agent, later he became a member of the Congress. In 1953, Karl went to the University of Chicago with a scholarship at the age of only 16. Rather soon, he dropped his study and went to New York City where he worked as a stock clerk at a bookstore. Due to recommendations of his former resident head, Meyer read books of several catholic authors just like Ammon Hennacy and Dorothy Day, who were engaged in the Catholic Worker Movement. According to his own words, Meyer found in the Catholic Worker "the most authentic American movement for change."[1]
In 1961, Meyer participated in the
In 1984, he defied the
In the 1990s, Karl Meyer used the "Peace House", a mobile home and educational center, in which he drove around the United States. In 1997 he founded "Nashville Greenlands", a catholic worker-affiliated community in Nashville, where he still lives.[2]
Meyer has been arrested more than 50 times while protesting, among other things, against the Cold War, the Vietnam War, conditions in East Germany, the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the death penalty and UN sanctions against Iraq. According to Richard Mertens of The University of Chicago Magazine, Meyer has committed his work to embrace peace by "living much of his life in voluntary poverty while trying to serve the poor and the unemployed."[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b Mertens, Richard (April 2001). "A Radical Takes Root". The University of Chicago Magazine.
- ^ a b "Karl Meyer". Never The Same. December 26, 2014.
- ISBN 978-1490572741.
Further reading
- Sicius, Francis J. (1982). "Karl Meyer, The Catholic Worker, and Active Personalism". Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. 93 (1/4). American Catholic Historical Society: 107–123.